Taylor Swift executes a sweet smackdown

After Taylor Swift publicly shamed Apple for refusing to pay royalties to artists for its new music streaming service, the company is reversing course, announcing it will pay artists after all. Mara Montalbano (@maramontalbano) has more.
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Taylor Swift with awards at Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas, in May 2015.(Photo: Eric Jamison/Invision/AP)

Chalk one up for the artists in the longstanding see-saw power struggle between musicians and music industry bosses.

But will the bosses win in the long-term? Maybe.

Over the weekend, Swift, in one of her signature polite missives, posted an "open letter" (entitled "To Apple, Love, Taylor," ) on Tumblr, taking Apple Music to task for deciding not to pay artists for their music streamed during a free trial period for its new streaming service.

How could a company so "historically progressive and generous" behave this way, she demanded. That's why, she wrote, her album, 1989, the top-selling album of 2014 and of 2015 so far, won't be on Apple's service.

"She's the most powerful person in the music business, I think it's safe to say," says Eric Boehlert, a former reporter for Billboard and Rolling Stone and now a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, an online non-profit that monitors the media.

True, Swift is not the first music artist to leverage her talent and sales power to get her way against powerful music distribution bosses, and she won't be the last.

But she's probably the youngest, and the nicest, to do so and win so decisively, and with positive implications for other music artists less rich and famous than she.

Plus, she's already taken on Spotify for similar reasons, pulling her entire catalog from the streaming service, and suffered no consequences.

"She was the perfect person to do this," says Boehlert, who covered a similar dispute between Pearl Jam and Ticketmaster back in the 1990s.

"She appeals to kids and moms and probably even grandmoms. She has a persona of being not cynical, not chasing her own career, and she had stood up to Spotify before and showed she was serious about compensation and fairness. She was the perfect person to do it."

"By making a statement and taking a stand, she's making it an ethical question; it not about her, as she can make money (regardless); she's taking a stand for other artists," says Alan Light, a veteran music journalist and author. "She's in an utterly unique position in her ability to do this."

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Swift not only comes across as genuine, she avoids getting dragged into PR disasters (such as the recent mess with Jay Z's streaming service, Tidal) in which multimillionaire artists can come off as greedy for even more millions, says Lindsay Zoladz, pop critic for New York magazine.

Instead, Swift cultivates a down-to-earth image, and taking the side of up-and-coming artists fits with that, Zoladz says.

"I don't think it looks quite so much like a blatant ploy to sell her own records. It comes across more genuine," says Zoladz. "At the end of the day, it is very often a branding decision on her part, but I think she's found a way to make it feel more genuine to her fans and not seem like such a calculated move."

Also, she has a powerful tool at her disposal: Social media, which she wields like a stiletto. Not so for Pearl Jam, says Boehlert.

In 1994, Pearl Jam canceled its summer tour because it believed the service fees Ticketmaster charged for selling tickets was too high. As a result of the band's complaints, the Department of Justice began an investigation into Ticketmaster for monopolistic practices, and Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder testified before Congress.

The band tried to create a tour in 1995 playing only venues that didn't have agreements with Ticketmaster but wound up having to cave, since Ticketmaster had deals with nearly every stadium and arena in the U.S.

"If Eddie Vedder had had social media, it all would have been different," says Boehlert. "Poor Vedder, he had to cancel a tour and just about had an ulcer from trying to take on Ticketmaster. He didn't have the benefit of social media. They were on their own."

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam on 'Late Show With David Letterman' in New York in May 2015.(Photo: Chance Yeh/ Getty Images)

Pearl Jam could not get other marquee artists to join them in the battle; Swift, either with Spotify or with Apple, would have gotten much more cooperation from other artists, Boehlert says.

"Pearl Jam was, far and away, the biggest band on the planet," he says. "You've got to be at the mountaintop, but, even if you are at the mountaintop, it takes a lot of guts."

Nor can Ticketmaster in the 1990s be directly compared to Apple in the 21st century.

"These guys were looking for a street brawl," Boehlert says. "They were eager to wage battle with Pearl Jam. Apple, (a), can't even count all their money and, (b), as Taylor said in her piece, is a progressive, sort of beloved corporation. Their personae and the ways they actually do business couldn't have been more different. And service fees was Ticketmaster's entire game. Apple has so many business they can barely keep track of them."

Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor, Rolling Stone, agrees that Swift is in a unique position, in that most of her top-selling peers, such as Beyoncé, have decided to "play ball" with digital streaming as "the new reality."

"Even Taylor Swift is going to have to come to terms with new reality taking shape, but while she has leverage she's using it to get the best she can," says DeCurtis.

But going forward, a viable business plan looks to be far off. "The bigger issue is, look, this is the way things are going," DeCurtis says. "I don't see Apple or Spotify as ripping artists off…but there is a situation where no one's been able to come up with an arrangement that makes everybody happy."

As with Pearl Jam, Light says, Metallica fought a similar battle 15 years ago, when it sued Napster, and "it almost ruined their career" because it was seen as going after their fans for downloading for free.

"But the message was essentially the same, that artists should be getting paid for people to listen to their music," Light says. "They're still mocked and harassed for that…It's clearly different when you're suing your fans, but they have to feel validated and in some sense screwed for watching Taylor become a hero fighting this fight."

And the fight isn't over, says Shirley Halperin, news director for Billboard. Streaming as the predominant method of listening to music is here to stay and everybody knows it, she says. She believes Apple will be successful in its goal of converting 50% of consumers who try Apple Music into paying subscribers.

"Will that be enough to save an entire music industry? I'm not sure," she says. "But I think we'll just need to wait and see how it plays out."

Other artists have stood up for principles and won.

The Beatles refused to play the segregated Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1964, as the civil rights movement was gaining steam. (They also refused to stay in segregated hotels unless black musicians touring with them could stay, too.)

"We never play to segregated audiences, and we're not going to start now," John Lennon said. "I'd sooner lose out appearance money." The Gator Bowl capitulated and whites and blacks were allowed to sit anywhere.